Suella Fernandes: Brexit gives us a huge opportunity to do things better

Written by:

Suella Fernandes MP

The House Magazine

Posted On:

7th December 2017

While the media focuses on the ins and outs of negotiations, we must not lose sight of the huge opportunities on offer, writes Suella Fernandes

Brexit Secretary David Davis

Credit:

PA Images

In June 2016, the British voted decisively to take back control of their country’s destiny. This was the right decision. The UK never felt entirely at home in an EU. An EU intent on further centralisation around its core project – the euro.

While our EU membership served us at the time, there was at its heart an irreconcilable difference on the final end point. This was apparent at the time we chose not to join the euro, but has grown over the years. The British people recognised this and made their choice. We want to be good friends and partners with the EU but we can best do that as a fully independent sovereign state.

Regaining control over our economy, trade, law and borders is a very exciting project that presents huge opportunities to rethink how we govern ourselves and do things better. The government is getting on with. Much progress has been made but there is much more to be done.

While the media focus on the daily ins and outs of the negotiations, legislation at Westminster and other consequentials, it is worth standing back and looking at what we have and can achieve.

Firstly, we have an agreed path to exit. We have started negotiations via Article 50 and have agreed with the EU27 that both sides wish to see a final trade agreement. This is important for both sides. Obviously, this is a negotiation that entails the UK putting its case forcefully. There will be discussions and compromises.

Secondly, we have put in train the domestic legislation necessary to leave the EU. The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill currently before Parliament is a highly professional piece of legislation that gives UK businesses and citizens’ certainty. We will have a fully functioning set of UK regulations the day we leave the EU.

We now have the processes in place to leave both at an EU level and at a domestic level. That is however just the process. What is important is how we use this new opportunity to secure our future prosperity and democracy.

The UK has always been a trading nation. In the 19th century the UK led the world on free trade and we can do so again. Regaining our seat at the WTO gives us a great opportunity to advocate free trade where previously our interests were subsumed in the EU.

Beyond this we are already in talks with the EU27 concerning a new trade agreement. There are however huge opportunities in the rest of the world. Lord Price, a former Trade Minister has already confirmed that 60 states with trade relations with the EU wish to roll over their agreements with the UK. There are also many states where we have no current agreements which have already expressed an interest in dealing with the UK. Old friends such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and India as well as important economies such as Brazil. There are big opportunities for the UK in areas that will increasingly form a larger proportion of the world’s economy.

Beyond the economy, the second major reason the British people were right to vote to leave the EU was democracy. While members of the EU, the majority of our laws were made in a system over which our Parliamentary democracy had little say. This sense of powerlessness created a distance between the voters and the politicians. No longer. The UK Parliament will soon be back in control of the UK’s borders, our regional policy, fishing, agriculture and much more. This is great news for our democracy. We will have politicians in Westminster that can really effect change.

We are already seeing a new vitality in our democracy. There is a lively discussion underway as to what a UK fishing and agriculture policy should look like. We can redesign a UK regional policy, ending the absurd system whereby the UK taxpayer sent money to Brussels only to get a smaller portion back covered in flags and strings. When the EU’s free movement policy comes to an end we can redesign our immigration system that is fair to everyone in the country, helping UK businesses train and skill Britons while still attracting the brightest and best to our shores.

Across the board the vote by the British people has given us a huge opportunity to do things better. This is an exciting time in British politics and I intend to do my bit to ensure this opportunity is not wasted.

Suella Fernandes is Conservative MP for Fareham and chair of the European Research Group

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Contributions from readers

graham669

08:20 on 8th December 2017

This has to be the most idiotic, incorrect and damaging summation, of the most significant policy decisions, of any UK government in decades.
As members of the EU, it is not correct that most of our laws are not made here, the only areas of influence that the EU has is in limited policy areas where the EU have been given competence by the member states, including the UK, by treaties.
It is also incorrect that we do not have control of our borders, there would be very little change to our borders if we leave, we are not signatories to the Schengen agreement, and at least half of all immigrants have been from outside the EU for decades.
Free movement of EU people would cease, but then the majority that we lose are EU residents needed here to work in many areas, including food production and the NHS. While making it more difficult for British residents to visit, or emigrate to, EU countries!
The referendum was a farce where the government did little to combat the lies of the wealthy brexit backers, who funded the lying images shown by the media every day.
The EU have, with the backing of the British government, made legislation, to clamp down on Tax Avoidance from January 2019, that is why May and her billionaire supporters are determined to leave the EU, at any cost, in March 2019.
What May and her government are doing is nothing to do with the best for the majority British population, it is all about the very wealthy avoiding the new EU anti tax avoidance legislation becoming UK Law.
If brexit goes ahead, the UK is in for the worst depression ever seen in the UK, as many financial management and manufacturing companies leave, to go to EU countries.
This government have already doubled our national debt since 2010, and we are paying £70 billion in interest this year, by contrast, our net cost of being EU members is £8 billion this year.
Any trade deal we end up with after brexit would cost us billions, it is sad that this author has no idea what she is writing about. This is not an exciting time in politics, it is a disaster about to happen.

looked_after_ch...

10:31 on 10th December 2017

I'm not sure who Ms Fernandes has been talking to but I'm afraid she is living in a Brexiteers bubble - naive nonsense. We have sold off all our national assets, failed to invest in people and communities for decades, have a third world prison and justice system have prioritised fragmentation over integration in every sphere from healthcare to housebuilding so that it is not possible to deliver policy. We are poised for nothing but obscurity and poverty.

frankem51_30412

17:33 on 10th December 2017

Basically the UK government bought the EU Financial Services Directive, which was written by the Brits for the Brits, in exchange for the fishing industry, because the City of London is more important economically than the fishing industry. Anyway, the fishing industry sells into the single market to which it will need continue access so this is yet another area over which we will not 'take back control'.
That the EU has just signed a free trade deal with the EU while UK has just agreed the broad terms by which it will leave the EU is something the Brexiteers can't bring themselves to face. As Obama said, we're at the back of the queue.

jaguarjon_28763

13:49 on 11th December 2017

I was encouraged to believe that Suella Fernandez was about to offer us something fresh and thought-provoking.
Instead she offers us the same old banger still running on threadbare retreads.
I notice she repeats the Brexit result as 'decisive', seemingly welded to the result. Oddly, the very insistence on underlining the result in this way indicates that even the Rabid Right knew it was a lied-filled stitch-up producing a photofinish. Nobody won. 60/40% is decisive. A couple of percentage points either way is deadlock.
Hence, in part, the headless chicken approach adopted by our negotiating team, designed to confuse the opposition. Well, yes, up to the point where the EU got tired of our schoolkid anarchy and simply laid out what we can have. Meanwhile, out in the world where real people have to live and work, decisions have to be made about the future of business and where and how to fund it. Exasperated by our Z list hack politicians, many have decided to locate the lifeboats and relocate to safe havens within EU borders, before the inevitable shipwreck. This is not negative propaganda, it's just the reported facts.
What's more, there is no golden horizon over which awaits some free trade Eden. Nobody likes us because (a) our trading style was essentially violent (b) exploitative and (c) our word cannot be trusted. The EU is the anvil, free trade nations are the hammer and we are nuts. Lights out.

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